


oh I do like to be beside the seaside

by FaerieChild



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: #crack, #fluff, #seaside, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 15:39:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11360451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaerieChild/pseuds/FaerieChild
Summary: Q thinks it would be great to have some quality time together at the British seaside.





	oh I do like to be beside the seaside

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for fun and any mistakes are my own. The idea came out of a conversation with others from the fandom who deserve some of the credit for the idea as it was not purely my own.

As far as James was concerned, it was all Q's fault. Q had been the one watching some programme on the television while the dinner was cooking and as soon as it was served and they were lounging on the sofa watching the news Q announced, “We should go to the seaside.”

James's chopsticks paused halfway to his mouth.

“Sorry?”

“The seaside. We should go sometime.” Q paused, “Together, I mean.”

James resumed eating.

“I'm told it's a thing people do, sometimes.”

“In Britain?” James checked.

“Where else would you go to the seaside?”

“The French Riviera?” James suggested mildly.

“I don't like flying.”

“We could drive,” James pointed out.

“We both have a day off on Saturday. The forecast is good. Let's go to Brighton.”

James screwed up his face.

“Are you on one of those weird, 'but people might guess that I'm gay' trips again?”

“Bisexual,” James clarified.

Q waved his own chopsticks in an apparent acquiescence to the point. “Bisexual,” He corrected. “Because it's not like you to care very much what people think.”

“I don't like the beach at Brighton.”

“It's a beach!” Q exclaimed. “How can you not like a beach?” Q shook his head.

James grunted and quietly went back to his dinner and watching the report on the movement of the day's trading on the London Stock Exchange. In truth he had forgotten about the exchange until it came to a long-weekend that would involve driving up to Lochaber to check on the progress of the rebuilding of Skyfall Lodge. 

While outwardly complying with all of the stringent architectural conservation rules around the conservation and reconstruction of historic buildings, Q had quietly pulled some strings to create a strong room in the basement and had quietly encouraged the planned introduction of fibre-optic broadband in the Highlands to be fast-forwarded a little for his own benefit. Q's plans seemed to be somewhere between a safe house and a secret government bunker-style high-tech lair. 

All throughout the reconstruction about once a month or whenever they could manage it, one or both of them would make the trip north to Scotland to make a site visit. This time they were both going and it would entail a ten hour car journey that Q was eager to split.

This was how James found himself persuaded to stop at the seaside in Yorkshire on a dull grey nondescript British day. They had spent half the day travelling North and Q was determined to spend the afternoon at the seaside before staying over and commencing the journey north the following day.

Everything about it spoke of the exact sense of mediocrity that James so hated about holidays at home but at Q's instruction, he parked along the promenade. The sea itself was a dull gunmetal grey, choppy and cold and uninviting. There was entirely too much concrete and the Victorian elements of the town's civic engineering appeared rather dated and old-fashioned. There was gum on most of the uneven and patchwork pavements, litter dotted the roadside and a bored looking council worker in a florescent jacket half heartedly trundled along the seafront clasping a litter picker in one hand.

Q could not be more excited. He jumped out of the car, eager to straighten his legs after too many hours cooped up in James's car. 

“Fortesque, darling?” James asked mildly.

Q stretched with exaggerated glee and took in a comedically huge gulp of fresh seaside air. “Do you smell that? Isn't it wonderful?”

“The rotting seaweed, the fish or the guana?”

“Nonsense! It's all about a spirit of adventure, isn't it?”

“Says the man who refuses to fly.”

“I fly,” Q pointed out, one finger raised in the true spirit of pedantry. “There was that time-”

“That one time where Bill and Eve bullied you into it and you won't let them forget it.”

“They bullied me into it!” Q pointed out. “And then you kept giving me sex eyes in front of people as if you didn't know we were in the middle of a mission. You're completely incorrigible.”

“So I've been told,” James mumbled but with a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “I suppose you want to walk around or something?”

“I have a list. Deck chairs. Walk on the prom. Paddle in the sea. Ice cream. Souvenir shopping. Fish and chips.”

James glanced at the sorry looking collection of boutiques with dirty windows. “Souvenir shopping?”

Q hushed him and started walking away, presuming – correctly – that Bond would follow obediently as he wandered a hundred years or so along the seafront to a sorry looking stand of well-worn deckchairs.

“It's hardly sunbathing weather,” Bond pointed out.

Q ignored him and paid for two, handing them over to Bond and pointing to the seaweed-filled beach scattered with litter and flotsam. “You set them up over there, I'm going to the cafe over there to get us drinks and before you say one word, I love the seaside and I am going to enjoy this so you can bloody well suck it up.”

Bond let out a slow puff of breath and accidentally caught the eye of the desk chair attendant who gave him a sympathetic smile. There was nothing else for it but to do as he was told and by the time Q returned with a tea and a coffee in polystyrene cups Bond had set up the deck chairs on the barren patch of grey sand.

Bond accepted the drink and inspected it. “Is that instant?”

“All they had,” Q mumbled. “I can't believe anyone still uses polystyrene cups.”

“I can't believe this place hasn't fallen into the sea. What's next. Ice-cream?”

“Ice cream comes after paddling, Bond.”

“You do realise it's about ten degrees out.”

“Pedantics. Us Brits, Bond, can't be bothered by such minor things as the weather on a day out or we'd never get anything done, would we?”

Bond blinked. Normally Q couldn't be tempted to run to the corner shop for a pint of milk if there was the faintest mizzle but get him to the coldest, bleakest patch of sand in Yorkshire and he suddenly turned into a kid on their first foreign holiday. After the instant coffee, and the desk-chair induced frostbite, Q insisted on paddling until he was shivering and then going for ice-cream. By the time they made their way to the fish and chip shop Bond decided it was time for an intervention.

“There's actually a little hotel along the way-” Q stuttered out through his chattering teeth.

“If you mean the mildew-encrusted lace curtained relic, I would rather drive all night than subject us to a night in that god-forsaken...” Bond trailed off as he saw Q's face. He was almost blue. “Right, that's it. Get in the car.”

“B-but we haven't even had fish and chips yet!”

“We'll get it to go, we can eat some on the way,” Bond gripped Q by the shoulders and directed him the direction of the vehicle and once inside, turned on the engine and turned the heat up as far as it would go. “Remind me never to let you go to the seaside unless the temperature is a least thirty degrees.”

“Spoilsport,” Q pouted. “I love the seaside.”

Bond stared at him. Hard.

“It's traditional!” Q insisted.

Bond muffled the sound of his partner's protests by muffling him with another blanket from the boot and insisted Q wait in the car where it was warm while he went to buy them fish and chips. Bond drove all night, finally getting to Lochaber sometime just before dawn and prodding Q until he shuffled sleepily towards the room Bond had booked for them in a five star country house hotel. The sheets were warmed, the fire was crackling and the pillows soft and inviting. Bond pulled Q into bed some time around five am and tucked the bedcovers in around them.

“Seagulls...” Q mumbled as he dozed off.

“Don't start me on the fucking seagulls, Q, I swear to God!”

“We didn't even feed them.”

Bond groaned heavily. “I'm divorcing you!”

“Shut up, Bond. We're not even married.”

Bond closed his eyes and wondered how long that would last. After all, Q clearly couldn't be trusted to navigate the world alone. He decided not to tell the sleepy bundle beside him that they were only a few miles from the sea. The little bastard would only go and swim in it and where would that get them?

“Bond, have you ever tried surfing?”

~


End file.
